Ping Pong humor!

So I love going to my local rec center.  I have told you how I am not like captain athlete and stuff.  So going to a gym and feeling the burn is about four level's above my athlete grade.  So the rec center is full of random middle aged people like me fighting off the last bad meal that we ate.  Wednesday nights I like to swim, oh and I realized that the more a pool is used the less pee there is in it and the rec center has teams practicing all the time in it so they have to clean, treat, and remove the pee on a very regular schedule.  Anyways, Wednesday nights is also ping pong and bad mitten night at the rec center.  I love being in the locker room during ping pong talk.  I overheard a couple of guys talk about how you don't buy a ping pong paddle.  You buy the wood or polymer that you like, then the glue and the pad separate and make your ping pong paddle.  Therefore you can control the bounce and grip and all sorts of stuff.  I was fascinated with this conversation.  Oh, and they all carry the paddles in hilarious bags.  One guy has a metal pistol case he keeps his in and most guys have those toiletry bags with their paddles and balls in them.  About a month or so ago I was walking from my truck to the rec center and I heard the funniest conversation ever on the planet earth (or at least to me it was)!  Like three guys were walking up to the door at the same time I was, holding their shaving kits, I mean ping pong paddle bags.  Then a guy comes out by slamming the door open and all red faced saying in a loud ping pong voice: There is no F-ing ping pong tonight.  The other guys are like, what?  The red faced guy: They are F-ing redoing the basketball court floors again so they aren't having F-ing ping pong tonight.  The other guys join in: No F-ing ping pong tonight, but it is Wednesday night and that is always F-ing ping pong night.  Then another guy says, they just F-ing re-did the basketball courts, why couldn't they tell us last Wednesday that F-ing ping pong is going to be canceled for this Wednesday?  This was all I got from the conversation but, to hear grown men using the "F" word with ping pong and being mad as hell was absolutely hysterical.  How can anyone be mad and be able to say F-ing ping pong in a serious tone? 

Bag of Diabetes

Back in August I was out camping.  I was prepared with four spare infusion sets, long acting insulin in case my pump broke, some IV prep, and of course the usually millions of test strips and batteries.  We headed out on a Friday night and by the time it was 11:00am on Saturday morning I only had one infusion set left.  At this point I made the call to my good buddy Jeff who was off the wagon, I mean his pump for the past two or so years.  It has been fifteen years since I haven't had a penis, I mean insulin pump attached to my belly.  So he and I talked over the phone and I saved my last infusion set and went to old school diabetes 101 basics of long term insulin and short term insulin.  I of course shot short on all my insulins at first not wanting to go low while pooping in the woods or anything.  In the end the rest of the camping trip was a success but I lingered for more of this non pump lifestyle.  So I kept my pump off for another day, then a week, and now it has been something like two months and being pump free has been the most amazing diabetes break of my life.  I now know why the caged bird sings or something like that.  I understand why Jeff stopped using his pump.  I don't know how long I will stay this way but for now I am enjoying it.  The other cool thing is that I quit using my diabetes man purse and went to another cool trick that Jeff does.  He just puts his diabetes crap in a zip lock bag and goes with it.  I started doing this and have loved it as well.  I embrace the scared person who actually can see a needle in my bag or a vial of clear liquid.  The shock and awe I see in peoples eyes finally lets me show the world that I have a disease and let me have it.  Not, hey you just don't eat cookies and everything is good right, kind of society.  I embrace my diabetes and if you ever want to see men and women nearly go into a panic attack, I recommend you to do the zip lock bag test and report to me what you see.

Biolite review

You all know that I am slightly obsessed with flashlights and lights in general.  If you don't then let me tell you that I am obsessed with having a flashlight to run with, a flashlight that is brighter than the sun, a flashlight in my truck that is easily used as a weapon, and a flashlight or area light for my tent.  My current tent light is approaching near death and when I replace the batteries there is always the fear of losing an eye because one of the springs isn't connected any longer and shoots out when the battery is pulled from it.  Technology has come a long way in the whole area light backpacking/camping world and I have had my eye on this thing called the powerlight by biolite inc.  It is an area light, a flashlight, and also has a USB thing to charge things.  Then the coolest part is that you can get these LED attaching lights that connect to it and you can string them up in trees and make a outdoor party atmosphere (it does not come with a margarita mixer).  The next thing I knew was it went on sale, buy the whole system and get an extra two area lights and free shipping.  I was instantly sold and bought one.

It is hard to tell but this sucker is amazing!  The only thing that I should have done differently is turned off the main powerlight and just used the area lights.  Plus the guys didn't make fun of me (or at least to my face they didn't).  That is a huge win in my book.  Right now we are having fun with an ongoing joke about "North Face" people.  You know the types that have the rainbow North Face logo on everything they can get and drive a Subaru while eating gourmet hand fed granola and free range chocolate bars from third world countries and stuff.  So anyways we usually say something like: That is what those North Face people would do.  Then the other person goes into a shame explanation how it was on sale and bla bla, bla.  Good times with the comedy.  There are all sorts of new area lights coming out that probably do a better job and are cheaper but I just love the little things that biolite put into this system to give it that extra quality and care, like they use this stuff themselves and realize that a fabric cord is so much easier and softer to roll up or the magnets to stick it to things.  Small things matter in my life so this gets three syringes and a pricked finger for how awesome and good the powerlight and area lights work from biolite.

I did "it" or something like "it"

I saw this picture thing on the book of faces and had to snag it for myself.  Very under rated diabetes comedy in that one.  So anyways, I have always had dreams of actually almost being in the athletic crowd all my life.  I kind of almost feel that way when I do marathons, but have always known that I had to do something bigger and diabetesier than that.  Then I met my favorite diabetes mentor Vic.  He is captain cool and ultra athletic and has allowed me to almost follow him around two steps behind him or so.  Then one day he told me to do one of those 70.3 triathlon things.  I almost peed my pants, puked up non diabetes friendly food, and kicked him in the shin for saying that.  Complete shock.  This was like two or so years ago.  Ever since then I have been trying to do athlete style things and wearing athlete style outfits and eating athlete looking food.  The thing was every year I would get so far then oh a heart surgery, or allergies, or diabetes would rear its ugly head up and put me out of the game for several months.  Then it was start it all over again with the athlete sleeping schedule, and athlete tv shows.  You get the point, that it felt like I would never stay alive or healthy long enough to actually be able to give someone lots of money to let me finish one of their 70.3 triathlon athlete events.  Then this year happened, I did one marathon and felt good, did another marathon and felt good, did a 100 mile bike ride and still felt good, so I put the small fortune down to be a participant in the Redman 70.3 triathlon in August.

I was so nervous about the swim and bought a wet suit and have been in the pool most Wednesdays (not in my wet suit) trying to slightly almost keep up with the actual triathlete people or the little kids in swim classes.  The funny thing was that the 1.2 mile swim was the best part.  I felt like doing the 2.4 mile swim would be great.  The bike was rough (Oklahoma winds just really started to get annoying after a while) and the run was of course 91 degrees in the middle of the afternoon (yes people because I am slow) but it was great.  I walked a bit, ran about 3/4 of a mile, walked a bit and loved it all.  I think this constant year after year, issue after issue has pushed me into just relaxing and having fun mode that I love.  When I finished I was tired but knew that I beat my personal time of arrival (I figured 8 hours and did it in 7:46 hours).  Baby sat my nephew that night and slept in till almost noon the next day and now I can officially say that I am almost arms distance from being only a couple of miles away from being the athlete type of person and am proud of my participation medal (we are supposed to not accept participation medals because only first through third should be able to show off their accomplishments or something like that I am told).  So I am going to keep training and see if I can't be ready in just slightly under a year for the Wisconsin actual ironman official full triathlon athlete thing.

https://jstrawberry.wordpress.com/

 

I have an update on my last post.  First I have to apologize to Jules (she is the lady who writes the above blog) that when she read my last post about her blog about our dates.  She was actually on time to the first date and I was late fifteen minutes because of getting turned around.  I enjoyed dating her for the short time it was but am pretty sure that my complete idiot'ness and getting everything messed up has ruined my opportunity for anything more to happen (she also wasn't impressed when I read on her blog that she was going to call it off with me and I had all of you post nice things about me a winning move either, it actually did the opposite).